Thinking and praying for those in Las Vegas. So senseless.
Have you ever read a book where the protagonist suddenly finds a clue that should have been discovered earlier? And you wonder how such a dolt makes it through the day?
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Have you ever read a book where the protagonist suddenly finds a clue that should have been discovered earlier? And you wonder how such a dolt makes it through the day?
Little known
fact about me: I enjoy playing Mahjongg and Search and Find games. The version
of Mahjongg that I have is rather complicated thanks to symbols that look
similar. The Search and Find games hide clues in plain sight and sometimes they
blend in with other objects. If your eyes are tired, you may miss things.
With that
said, here’s what I finally (and belatedly) realized. I may be frustrated
because I can’t find a clue or a Mahjongg tile, and the phone might ring. I
walk away, and when I come back, son-of-a-gun, there’s what I was looking for
but couldn’t see, right before my eyes. Sometimes I only have to turn away for
thirty seconds and when I look back, there’s the tile I couldn’t see.
I think
sometimes we, and our characters, become too intent on finding something. If we/they
walk away even for a moment, or leave to do something else, they may see
exactly what they were looking for in the first place when they return. (This
is the time to thunk yourself on the forehead
with the palm of your hand.)
In the Sandi
Webster series, something Pete taught Sandi is to look up, look down, look all
around. Even that doesn’t always work, until the second time you try it.
Some of the
things we read in mysteries aren’t a matter of coincidence; they’re a matter of
taking a fresh look at things.
Have you ever
lost your glasses or car keys and searched the entire house in vain?
Frustrated, you sit down and glance toward the kitchen. Wait a minute! The last thing I recall doing when I still had the keys in
my hand was set the groceries on the sink. Thunk!
You take a
look and find your keys sitting next to the cookie jar. You just happened to
grab a cookie (or two) before putting the groceries away to stave off that
empty feeling in your stomach. Now about those glasses…
We tend to
write a lot off to coincidence, when we should be thinking in terms of using
fresh eyes and a fresh outlook. If our protagonist becomes too intense, in too
much of a hurry or too frustrated, they may very well miss something. In real
life, we go through the same thing.
As writers,
we sometimes have to plant clues with that in mind. How easy might it be for
your character to overlook something important? Another thought is if they’re
distracted. Do you think a bad guy might try to distract them when he knows
they’re practically touching the clue? They key for the bad guy is not to be
obvious. Distraction is always a good… Well, how about that? I got distracted
and have no idea what I was going to say.
Half the fun
of writing mysteries is to create obstacles for our characters; natural things
that we might experience in our own lives.
In the case
of those lost keys, what was the clue to finding them? Was it the groceries or
the cookies? Or both? Or simply taking the time to go back over what you were
doing the last time you saw them. In my case, it would probably be the cookies,
especially if they were chocolate.
Until next
time, I wish you success in finding whatever it is you lost. Give yourself
time, and the answer will come to you.
CLICK HERE to
visit Marja McGraw’s website
CLICK HERE
for a quick trip to Amazon.com
Kidnapping,
hacking, cybersecurity, prepping – Entrance to Nowhere – A Sandi Webster Mystery
has it all. Give it a try and enjoy the adventure.
